Packaging, stationary, and other paper-based products are generally manufactured using sheets of raw paper stock or other materials that are drawn across presses, dies, punches, or other paper-cutting or paper-forming equipment. Beverage and other cartons, containers, playing cards, signs, placards, corrugated boxes, and other paper or fiber-based or other products, are generally formed by contacting a sheet or web of raw material with a punch or die when stripping-out desired areas of material. Such products can also be formed by contacting the sheet or web with a cutting or fold-making blade when generating blanks out of the sheet.
In stripping, blanking, embossing, die-cutting, and other paperboard operations, the raw feedstock can be in the form of paper, cardboard, plastic, fibrous, or other material, which is conveyed over a working area. The working area can generally include a flat cutting surface or hollow female blanking area affixed to a lower platen of a paperboard press, over which a blank stock can be drawn, placed, or positioned on, and can be contacted with a blade, punch, or other working tool affixed to an upper platen of a paperboard press. The sheets are conveyed through work areas on support frames, for example, wooden, metal, or other support frames, which can be sized to conform to the input sheets. The sheets can be conveyed across the stripping or blanking areas using belt drives, linear motors, or other sources of mechanical driving force.
In order to perform paperboard operations, the upper platen, or male platen, along with the cutting, blanking, or stripping tool affixed to the upper platen, must be aligned with the cutting surface or support frame affixed to the lower platen, or female platen. Under current practice, this alignment is done by guess and check. A worker or other user of the paperboard press, positions themselves above or below the two platens and eyeballs the boards until the worker decides the boards are properly aligned. Such a feature is time consuming, and often times can lead to human error. A need exists to eliminate these and other drawbacks in the art.